Escape
by Chromaggia
Summary: When Freddy starts terrorizing the Loser's Club, they discover that he's not the only one living in the Dreamscape. Krueger's jump-roping girls and his previous victims just want to escape the hell he's created. Can the Losers help? Full summary inside.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is basically the story of Freddy's jump-roping girls who sing the creepy rhyme in people's dreams. They are his victims that he killed when he was alive. The kids from IT will appear in the next chapter.**

* * *

The girls who jumped took a moment of rest. They smoothed out their white dresses and sat carefully on the dirty floor of the boiler room. It had been so long since they'd been able to take a breather. Ever since they had become servants of Fred Krueger, they had been his playtime rangers. That's what he had called them. They kept watch over Fred's victims in the Dreamscape, playing jump-rope and singing their song. _One, two, Freddy's coming for you._ Beth, Rachel and Dawn were their names. Beth had been there the longest - she had been dead the longest. Rachel had arrived second, and when Dawn came they had become a trio. That was when they started their game of jump-rope.

They hadn't wanted to do it. To do it would mean to work for Fred, and Fred had been the one who killed them. But they had no choice. They were in his world, and he made the rules. They had their little ways of defying him, though. First of all, their rhyme. It was something they made up themselves; a warning. Since the victims never seemed to know they were dreaming until Fred came out of the shadows, the girls created their own little red flag. Sometimes, when Fred was either feeling lazy or posessing extreme concentration, they would try and directly warn the dreamers. For a while, they did this a lot. However, Fred hadn't been getting a lot of victims lately. This meant that whenever he did kill, he was at the top of his game. They couldn't risk it.

While the lack of available dreamers was good for the general public, it was bad for the jump-ropers. Whatever anger Fred couldn't take out on anonymous teenagers, he took out on them. While the jump-ropers couldn't die, they could feel pain. Physical pain wore off faster than it did on the living, but that didn't stop Fred. Besides, much of what he did tended to be psychological anyway.

As they sat down, Rachel took something out of her pocket. "Someone fell asleep in the kitchen on New Year's Eve. Drunk, y'know." She put the object in the light so the other girls could see what it was. "There was some food there." There were three rolls. The girls each took one, bit into it once, and stuffed it in their pocket. This was their ritual. It was rare that they came across food, and while they did get hungry sometimes, they knew people who got hungry more. "How long do you think he'll be gone?" She asked, glancing knowingly at her friends. It had been sort of inevitable that they'd form an alliance in the situation that Fred had thrust them into. It was a little sad to call these girls her friends, but it would be worse to have an indifference toward them.

"This is the first kid he's killed in a week." Beth said. "He'll take his time." The others nodded. They never doubted Beth.

"So, do you think we can..." Everyone knew the end to Dawn's question. She wanted to see Fred's trophies. He didn't keep all the people he'd killed - only the ones that mattered. They tended to hide throughout the Dreamscape, understandably. Most of the teenagers disliked the girls. After all, they played on Team Krueger. Some of them had been lured into death by them. Only a select few associated with them, and those were the ones they gave most of their food to.

Beth looked warily into the distance where Fred had disappeared. "Yeah." She said. "Sure. Let's go."

In some ways, looking for their friends was like hide and seek. The only difference was, well, the fact that they were dead and, by definition, not very playful. The girls had stopped simply calling their friends' names long ago. Fred was able to imitate their voices. This way, you never really knew who was calling you. Better to look for them the hard way.

"We usually find Tina in the white space." Rachel remembered. The white space was just that- a space of whiteness. The only way to tell which was up and which was down was by asking yourself whether or not you were standing up. It wasn't the most creative area of the Dreamscape, and therefore a place Fred avoided.

The trio found the white space with ease. They had walked this path many times before. Tina was the first of Fred's victims that they had met, and they visited her the most.

She was off in the distance, singing to herself softly and rocking back and forth. This was her way of dealing with her situation. Everyone had a different method. Rod Lane was angry all the time. Glen Lantz pretended it had never happened. And Beth took control of things as much as she could. "Tina?" Dawn said as they got closer.

The girl turned around in shock. For a moment, she stared at them, scrutinizing their look. She always did this, always tried to figure out if it was actually the girls or just Fred talking to her. Finally, she whispered, "What is the color of today?"

"Indigo." The girls answered in a soft unison. That was their code phrase. As far as they knew, Fred didn't know it. Now, Tina knew that it was actually them. She smiled weakly.

"Haven't seen you guys in a while." She noted. "You got any cool, uh... stories to tell me?" The look on her face said she disapproved of her own use of the word _cool_. Her face betrayed a lot of her emotions, but the girls never told her so. They had a feeling it would upset her.

"He hasn't been doing much lately." Dawn said with an air of hope. "We think that Elm Street might've forgotten all about him. 'Course, there are always older siblings telling the younger ones about him, thinking it's just a fairy tale, so that's not helping. And after that thing with Jason, he's probably not striking up alliances any time soon. So maybe one day he'll just get bored and..." She cut off her ramble as she realized what he usually did when he was bored. "He might, uh... choose a different street." Ouch. That wasn't the right way to end the sentence either.

"And then tons of other kids'll get killed." Tina said, laughing bitterly. "Jesus Christ." She shook her head and sat down. "He's not gonna stop. He's either gonna be hurting people in the real world or hurting us. He's not gonna stop."

"That's her mantra for the day." Rachel whispered to Beth, who slapped her on the wrist.

"He's not gonna stop. He's not gonna stop. He's not gonna stop." Tina repeated, rocking back and forth. The three of them were about to leave when she suddenly stood up. "Just leave." She ordered. "If you don't have any good news, just leave." She put her head in her hands. "Who am I kidding? You guys never have good news, 'cause he's not gonna stop. Go away."

There was a slight pause, and then Beth said, "We brought some food."

Tina looked up as Beth took her roll out of her pocket. "Where'd you get that?" She asked.

"Fred took us on a New Year's... trip thing." Rachel explained. "We were in a kitchen, I swiped them. He didn't notice." She shrugged.

Tina reached out and took the roll. "Thanks." She muttered gratefully. After a second, she took a bite. "Haven't, uh... I haven't eaten in a while." She walked away with the roll and began to do her singing routine again, her back to the girls.

"See you later." Beth called. She motioned toward the other girls and they walked away silently.


	2. Chapter 2

Little did the jump-roping girls know, Fred had not gone on one of his normal trips. No one was scared anymore - no one was having nightmares. And quite frankly, he was fed up with it. He needed some help. And where did a dream demon find the best help?

Hell.

He'd been there before, and he didn't like it. The fire reminded him of his last moments, which held both the most glorious and most painful experiences of his life. He was granted eternal power, but he was _on fire_. Needless to say, he didn't like Hell too much.

That's why he greeted the first creature he saw. It was a clown, seated at the very entrance to the fiery land of the damned. "Waitin' for a bus?" He asked.

* * *

"Eddie," Mrs. Kaspbrak sighed, "do you have your inhaler?"

The mother and son were seated in the clean red car, idling in front of Ben Hanscom's house. Mrs. Kaspbrak didn't like that kid. He was a clumsy little kid who had gone and gotten himself stabbed by Henry Bowers on the last day of school. The blubbering fool had probably started it, too. And she could bet he had tons of junk food in his house that Eddie wasn't allowed to eat. She feared that he would get diabetes as soon as he stepped in the door. Not to mention the other kids whom Ben had invited to sleep over as well. Stuttering Bill Denbrough, the poor thing; the only one Mrs. Kaspbrak felt any sympathy for, because he'd lost his brother just last year. Richie Tozier, an annoying little redheaded smartass who didn't know when to shut his mouth. Mike Hanlon, a filthy little colored person who had also provoked Bowers. Then there was Stan - Mrs. Kaspbrak liked Stan. He was the only reason Eddie was allowed to sleep over at Ben's house. That, and the fact that Beverly Marsh _wouldn't_ be attending.

"Yes, Mom." Eddie answered. All part of the routine. Eddie knew he was in trouble without his inhaler. He depended on it like a security blanket. Only an infant without a security blanket was just confused and disoriented. Eddie without his inhaler... he could die. Of course, he had dealt with worse things than being without an inhaler,  
_(hello i am pennywise the dancing clown)  
_but he didn't want to think about those things. Right now, all he wanted was a bag of potato chips, a game of Sorry, and a late-night movie. Nothing scary. Nothing to remind him of what had happened. He supposed being around his friends might be trigger enough for him to remember exactly what had happened in the sewers (were they even in the sewers?) but it was better than another night at the pharmacy with his mom. She'd found a new brand of hand sanitizer and was elated.

"Good." His mom answered. She frowned as her son's hand reached for the car door handle. "You don't need to go, you know."

His hand stopped where it was.

"We can just drive to Rite-Aid. We could refill your inhaler since you're running out-"

"Out of water." Eddie whispered to himself. That was something he remembered. The man in the pharmacy, explaining his inhaler to him. _Just a placebo._ And, to think of it, if he really did have asthma, how did he survive for an hour that one time when his supply was empty?

"What did you say, hon?"

Eddie's hand rediscovered movement, and he opened the door. "Nothing." He said, grabbing his Sleepover Supplies. "We can refill my inhaler tomorrow. No rush." He got out of the car and ran to the doorway.

* * *

"My name is-"

"I know what your name is." The clown growled. "You're Freddy Krueger. The dream demon."

Fred grinned darkly. "Freddy's just what they call me when they think they can kill me." He said. "I'm afraid I don't know what you are."

The clown stood up. "I am Pennywise, the stuff children are afraid of... I'm like you. Kids are my game. I do think you've been aiming a bit older lately, though. Losing your touch?"

"Not really." Fred moved toward him.

* * *

Eddie was the last boy to arrive, fifteen minutes late. Considering his mother's usual punctuality, this was a surprise. However, he knew how she felt about his friends. He saw how she'd purposely delayed getting in the car, hoping Eddie would forget about the sleepover, like he did when he was five. When she found him waiting in the car, she had finally gotten in. That had been a shocker.

"Hey, Eds." Richie greeted. "We thought you'd forgotten lil' old me and the gang. God, do we need to save your life in order for you to notice us? Oh, wait..."

"Beep-beep, Richie." Ben said automatically. Eddie glanced at him, a silent thank-you. He didn't remember his life being saved by his friends. But then again, he didn't remember much of what had happened over the summer. What a rip-off. "Glad you could make it."

"I'm shocked he did." Richie commented. "Do you have your inhaler, Eds?"

"Don't call me Eds."

"Or what? You'll stick your inhaler in my mouth and turn it to battery acid? Oh, wait..."

"When did I ever do that?"

"As if you don't remember."

The boys all looked at Richie with looks on their faces that clearly said they didn't remember. "W-w-what are y-you talking about, Ruh-ruh-richie?" Bill asked.

"When we fought it."

More blank looks.

"Eds, man, you stuck your inhaler right inside that creep's mouth and screamed, 'This is battery acid!' And then it fell as if it actually _was_ battery acid."

"As if I'm that brave." Eddie rolled his eyes. "Man, now I've got a headache. Got any aspirin in this house, Haystack?"

Ben nodded. "I'll be right back." He walked into the kitchen.

* * *

"Listen." Fred said with authority. "We both need fear. Specifically, the fear of kids. Now, Hypnocil is the latest thing on Elm Street right now. Back on your home turf, nobody's ever heard of it."

It was true. Hypnocil was screwing Freddy over. When kids took the drug, they didn't fear him anymore because they knew they didn't need to. It was his kryptonite.

"However, people there have heard of you. People have heard of all of the other fucked-up shit that goes on there. In Maine, people are scared because the monster under the bed might be real. There's been enough demons there to give 'em reason enough to be afraid. So, let me deal with the kids a little, then you and I could take that place by storm. Whaddya say?"

Pennywise thought, and then he gave his reply.

* * *

Beverly Marsh got off the bus a couple of blocks from Ben's house. Fantastic night for her dad to have to work, and that wasn't sarcasm. Knowing Mr. Marsh, he'd go to work for a couple of hours, get drunk, then come home and drop like a rock. As long as she got back to the apartment fairly early (say, ten o'clock) he would never know she was gone.

She was over the moon. For the first time in a long time, she was sneaking out to see her friends just for the hell of it. No evil clowns to destroy, no Henry Bowers to worry about now that he was in a psychiatric institution, and best of all, school was about to start. And school meant friends. School meant she could get away from home for six hours at a time. School meant more school, and more school led to college, which led to finally leaving this town for good. Before she knew it, she'd never have to see her father again.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Right now, she didn't want to think about the future. She only wanted to see Bill wipe out Richie at Sorry, while Ben never got out of Start. Sorry- the game of revenge. The game to play late at night when everyone was deprived of sleep and therefore everything was hilarious.

That was when she heard the noise in the bushes. Shit. So predictable. She turned around and faced them, waiting for a squirrel or something to come out. There was some more rustling, but nothing else happened.

Well, now Bev was just bored. She turned around to keep walking, but then she heard a voice muttering. Fuck. She started to walk faster. Eddie had never told her that his side of the neighborhood had the same creepy homeless men that her's did. Normally, they left you alone if you ignored them. Peaceful coexistence.

The bushes rustled some more, and then the voice was clearer. It was the voice of a small child. And in Derry, homeless _children_ were completely different from homeless _men_. "Where are ya goin'?"

She turned around to find... nothing. She moved closer to the bush, knowing she shouldn't. "What?" She asked.

"I said," There was a silence, and then some red fuzzy clown hair poked out. "Where are ya goin'?" The voice had turned deeper, and gravelly. Beverly knew who it was.

"Oh my god." She said, and broke into a run. Eddie's house was only a block and a half away now. Not that far. She sprinted, taking short and quick breaths. It couldn't be him again. Not again. They'd killed him. He was dead. And dead meant gone, goodbye, seeya-wouldn't-wanna-be-ya. It didn't make sense for him to be back. But there were footsteps behind her, coming fast and heavy.

But maybe she'd misjudged the man's identity. No matter who he was, he was creepy, but if she could get a look at him, just to make sure it wasn't the clown man...

She turned around and saw something completely different from what she expected.

It was neither a man, nor the evil clown. At least, she didn't think it was a man. Whoever it was, his face did not look right. He wore a sweater and fedora, but the scariest of these things...

He raised his right hand. On it was a glove, only instead of finger spots it had knives. And they looked sharp.

Beverly began to back away slowly. She was in a trance now, hypnotized by the glint of his eyes, of the knives, of the marks on his face.

She didn't notice she was about to step off the sidewalk until she tripped on the end of the curb. She fell backward, screaming. She landed on a sewer, hitting her elbow against the edge of the sidewalk. The man started to walk toward her, and then she woke up.

She was still on the bus, which was coming to a stop right in front of Ben's house. Of course it had been a dream. Why would she get off the bus two blocks away from her destination when the bus could just take her there. Her head hurt like hell, though. She got off the bus as she rubbed it. "Ow." She muttered, walking up to the doorstep.


	3. Chapter 3

The jump-roping girls looked on from the bushes as Beverly disappeared from the dream. "She's strong," Rachel commented. "Only a few people are ever able to escape from the dreams." It was true. Kristen and Nancy had been the best at it. And even then, Krueger always found them.

Beth looked less optimistic. "How old do you think she is?" She wondered. "She's younger than most of the people he goes after. Mostly it's teenagers. At least then they're way older than us... that girl looks like she could have gone to school with us." She looked to the edge of the street. It was supposed to resemble the place where the victim had fallen asleep. In the Dreamscape it was called Realscape. The street sign read _Elm Street_. "Every town has an Elm Street..." She muttered to herself.

"I thought Fred only killed for revenge." Dawn said.

"There's no one left for him to punish." Beth explained. "Now he's just doing it for fun." She shook her head in disgust.

Fred was standing on the curb, fuming silently. At the sound of Beth's voice, he turned around the face the bush that they were hiding behind. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." He growled, moving toward the bush. "Come here, little piggies..." His claws glinted in the darkness as he tore off a branch from the bush.

* * *

"Hey, Beverly!" Bill greeted as he moved his pawn on the game board. "What's up?"

"Fell asleep on the bus." Beverly said as she put her sleeping bag on the floor and took off her shoes. "Really weird. There was this guy with burns on his face, and these, uh..." She tried to find a way to explain what had been on his hand, "uh, on his hand, was this kind of glove thing, with knives on them." She shrugged it off as she sat down next to Richie. "I play winner, all right?"

"Sounds pretty messed up." Ben noted. "Are you okay?"

Beverly nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a-"

"_Jesus_, Bev!" Richie exclaimed suddenly. "Bleed all over my face too, why don'tcha?"

"What?" Beverly asked.

"Your elbow!" Richie said, "It got skinned. What, did you trip on your way out the door?"

Beverly looked at her arm, and indeed, it was bleeding. "That's weird." She said. "I don't remember falling... must have happened while I was asleep. The bus took a sharp turn or something."

"That doesn't look like something that happened on the bus." Eddie said, looking quite green.

"Look," Mike said, "It looks like there's little rocks in it. That's what happens to me when I trip on the road."

"Do we really need to consider the aspects of the cut?" Eddie asked.

Ben stood up. "I'll get a band-aid." He said, and walked out of the room.

* * *

"We've got a new town to play in." Fred said, a look of dark happiness on his face. "This is Derry, Maine. Lots of creatures like us here, lots of-"

"You mean lots of creatures like you." Dawn interrupted. "Demons. We're not demons."

"Dawn..." Beth warned, pulling the youngest girl next to her.

"Yes." Fred continued. "Demons like _us_. You work for me, girls. You're my little hell children, like it or not." He looked at the girls. Their faces no longer betrayed that much emotion. That was no fun. "If you screw this up, if you do anything," He slashed Dawn's arm with a quick jerk of his hand, "then there will be a price."

Dawn looked at her arm, which was bleeding steadily. Another addition to the scars that formed her outline. The wound would heal soon, but the pain would remain. She gave a small, almost inaudible gasp and stepped behind Beth.

"Then again," Fred considered, "that other girl would make a nice addition to your little group... maybe I'll be able to let one of you go to make room for her." He smiled gravely. "Yes... which of you will I let out of my dream world?"

* * *

"Are you okay?" Ben asked as he helped Beverly apply her band-aid. There was deep worry in his eyes, much deeper than one could expect from a simple cut. She knew what he was thinking. He suspected that her father had done this to her. Ever since he had seen him chase her out of the house, he had known what Mr. Marsh was like. Of course, he had never asked her about it, but he always knew. She was afraid she may have also revealed her situation to him at some point by accident. One sentence, a casual mention of her dad's drinking habits - anything could have tipped him off. She hoped that he wouldn't tell anyone. If she went into foster care, it might be worse than where she was right now. Who was to say there weren't worse parents out there than her father? People who hit harder, people who drank more. It wasn't worth the risk to tell anyone directly. Still, it was nice to have at least one person know.

"I'm fine." She answered, putting on a brave face. "Hey, it's not like we haven't dealt with worse than this before. This is nothing compared to, say, evil clowns in the sewers."

"_Thank you._" Richie said with relief. "At least _someone_ has the guts to talk about what happened." He jerked a thumb to Eddie. "This lunkhead over here says he don't remember spraying his inhaler into its mouth." He began to act out the incident as he stood up.

"'This is battery acid!'" Beverly nearly shouted in an imitation of her friend, laughing. She looked at Eddie. "You sure showed that guy. Basically saved our life, remember?"

"No, I don't." Eddie shook his head. "When did I ever do that?"

Beverly looked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?" How could he forget the six of them facing the demon that had haunted them for so long?

"He's been playing dumb all night." Richie said, disappointed. He sat down, shaking his head. "Looks like we're the only ones without selective amnesia, miss Beverly Marsh."

"I guess so..." Beverly looked around at her friends, who all looked just as confused as she felt.


	4. Chapter 4

"Do you think he meant it?" Dawn asked after a long silence. The three girls were walking back to the boiler room, and none of them had said a word. Rachel was clutching her arm, which was beginning to heal and form a scar. "Would he really let one of us go?"

Beth thought for a moment. "I don't know," She finally said. It was the first time she hadn't had an answer for Dawn, and this secretly saddened her. Dawn was always asking questions. "He might not. He could send us to another part of the Dreamscape... he might just have that little girl as an addition to us. Or maybe he's not planning anything."

The last one was what sounded right to the girls. It was normal of Fred to give people false hopes. That was the nature of his work. You think you're just dreaming, and then you get cut and realize it really hurts. Next thing you know, you're dead. When he was alive, it was different. Mr. Krueger has something to show you in his room. Don't scream, you don't need to be afraid.

And then you're pulled out of heaven after he dies, working for him for the rest of eternity.

Rachel realized that her arm wasn't bleeding anymore. It had healed unnaturally, just like everything in Fred's artificial Hell. Rachel's arm was better, but she knew the redheaded girls wouldn't. Her mortal arm, probably having a band-aid put on it by her mortal parents, in a world that was delicate and yet so much better than this one.

"Maybe he will replace one of us," Rachel said, trying to keep the hope out of her voice. "It sounds pretty nice to me. Little Orphan Annie fills in, one of us gets to go back to heaven. It'd be good for us."

"Yeah, and how good for the girl?" Beth snapped. "I thought we told ourselves we'd help Fred's victims, not serve them to him."

"We wouldn't be serving her!" Rachel said. "We'd just let Fred do his job! Maybe if we started doing that in the first place, he wouldn't be paying so much attention to us!" She raised her arm, which was covered with scars, to make her point.

"Here we go," Beth said, preparing for the big speech that Rachel always made when she was venting about their captor.

"Every day, our arms are cut, our legs are bruised, our necks are slashed, our bodies are ruined so that others won't have to die," Rachel vented, "And why? He always gets them anyway!"

"Because we-"

"Because we try to do something good and he catches us!" She screamed.

"Rachel, be quiet," Dawn whispered, cautiously looking for Fred out of the corner of her eye. She was starting to panic. Fred would find them, and he would hurt them, and...

She didn't let herself think about those things.

"And maybe," Rachel finished, "if we just let the man do his job, we wouldn't be getting so beat up all the time!"

Beth walked forward until she was directly in front of Rachel. "It's the sacrifice we have to make." She said with authority.

Rachel was incredulous as she looked back at her friend. "Yeah, well screw sacrifice." She answered softly. "I think it's time I got a break." And with that, she slowly walked away.

* * *

Beverly sat on the porch in Ben's backyard, trying to make sense of what had happened. She fell asleep on the bus, in an aisle seat - nowhere near a window or anything that could hurt her if she stayed still. She had a dream, fell down in the dream, and when she woke up her elbow started to bleed. She had woken up in her seat. There was nothing on the bus that could have mixed in those little pieces of concrete and dirt with the blood… so how had that happened? Dreams weren't real. Beverly knew that. After her and her friends had killed the sewer monster, she'd had nightmares of its return for at least two weeks.

As a matter of fact, her little nap on the bus was the first time she hadn't dreamt of Pennywise.

She absentmindedly tapped on the side of the porch that she sat on, not quite thinking anything for a while. Ben and the others wouldn't notice she was gone. It wasn't that they didn't like her; that was just what happened in big groups… not to mention a big group where she was the only girl. Everyone was trying so hard to pay attention to the others that there was always someone who got forgotten. Still, she kept her ears alert. If she heard anyone through the screen door ask where she was, she'd know to go back inside. It was ridiculous that a cut this inconsequential would raise alarm, but her friends, well, cared. They had saved each other's life countless times in the past few weeks.

Beverly was startled as the door opened. She let out a small gasp as she turned around to see Richie Tozier standing on the steps. "Oh, hi." She greeted as her heartbeat returned to normal. "I was just, uh-"

"On the lookout for aliens?" He asked, still standing. "'Cause I think we've handled enough of the supernatural for one summer." He adopted a bad British accent as he recited, "It is time to go back inside for tea time, Ms. Beverly. No evil clowns out here to worry about."

Beverly grinned, but it didn't reach her eyes.

Richie sat down next to her. "You know what I'm talking about, right?" He asked. "Pennywise the-"

"The dancing clown." Beverly finished for him, staring at the grass. "Yeah, I remember." She sighed. "Kind of wish I didn't." It was true. She didn't want to remember the gleam in his eyes, the benign-looking balloons that he seemed to pull out of his sleeve. And she sure as hell didn't want to remember the fate of Patrick Hocksetter and the slugs. People said that they feared what they didn't understand, and that was true. She didn't even know if Pennywise was its real name.

"Yeah, well, you and I are the only ones who have any idea who that is." Richie said. "I mentioned it to Eds... he looked at me like I was a loony."

"You are a loony."

"Yeah, but-"

Beverly laughed, a little over-the-top as she did so. "You admitted it!" She said cheerfully. "You admitted that you're a loony! Let's go inside." At this point, she was willing to do anything to change the subject. If Eddie didn't remember what had happened, then she envied him. She stood up, taking Richie's hand.

"You do realize that is the most phony laugh I have ever heard." Richie said, glaring at her. "I know it sucks eggs, remembering. I have nightmares about the guy too. But come on! Isn't it weird? We are _the only ones_ who remember what happened."

Beverly stood in place for a while. She hadn't thought about that.

"If you go back in there, they're going to harp on your cut." He reminded.

Beverly let go of Richie's hand. "You're right." She said. And with that, she walked inside. Better to be with her friends worrying about a dream than with Richie worrying about an evil that was very real to her.

* * *

Rachel hadn't gotten that far in the Dreamscape (still in the boiler room, believe it or not) when she saw Fred Krueger. In a panic, she hid behind a gas can and began to spy. This went against everything that she had said to the other two jump-ropers, but for the first time in a long time, she wanted to know what he was doing. He was holding up a piece of fabric… some kind of clothing. It was too dark to see what it was. Finally, he lit a fire to examine it in a better light.

It was a dress, and it matched the one that Rachel was wearing.

* * *

**A/N: Here's the cast list that I promised.**

**Bill Denbrough: Jonathan Brandis**

**Ben Hanscom: Brandon Crane**

**Eddie Kaspbrak: Adam Fariazl**

**Beverly Marsh: Emily Perkins**

**Richie Tozier:** **Seth Green**

**Stan Uris: Ben Heller**

**Mike Hanlon: Marlon Taylor**

**Beth: Isabella Fuhrman**

**Rachel: Daveigh Chase**

**Dawn: Maria Lark**

**Fred Krueger: Robert Englund**


End file.
